Meet your pastor: Journey from the Dominican Republic to Freeport

Wednesday

With a vision of bright light around a priest while serving as an altar attendant in his home church in the Dominican Republic, a young Eldred George knew it was a sign to become a priest.

With a vision of bright light around a priest while serving as an altar attendant in his home church in the Dominican Republic, a young Eldred George knew it was a sign to become a priest.

The pastor, James Douglas, eventually became George’s mentor. This was not the first, but the second experience of seeing an aura of light and the first experience was very similar.
“One Sunday I was serving at the altar and the bishop was there. As I was incensing – serving the incense – I saw the bishop’s face with this bright light. I thought what is this? The bishop noticed something in me and afterwards said we have to talk. After, he said ‘don’t be afraid,’ I think he knew what had happened to me,” George said.

George said the signs confirmed his calling to become a priest. Up to that point, he had wanted to go into the medical field yet, being from a poor family, he had few resources.
“He (God) conveys his message to his people in many different ways. We react to God’s answers in different ways, too,” he said.

Growing Up
From the time his neighbor, a teacher, took him to kindergarten as an 8-year-old, through his high school graduation, George said he never missed a day of school. While in high school, he worked cleaning an attorney’s office.

One day while cleaning, George picked up a book and read aloud to himself.
“He (the attorney) surprised me, reading one of his books in the office, and he liked the way I read, so he took me to this radio station and he said, ‘You have a future disc jockey here,’” George said.

A staff member of the station took out a newspaper and had George read aloud. George was asked to come back the next day in his best outfit.

“My best outfit was what I was wearing. I had one pair of pants, shirt and shoes. Whenever my mom was going to wash them I had to stay home,” he said.
The next day he arrived in clothes washed and starched.

“The lawyer said ‘OK, no more cleaning my office.’ I say ‘No way. I’m going to come here first thing in the morning – I’m going to clean your office and then I’m going to the radio station,’” George said.

He did that until 1965, when times in the Dominican Republic became tense.

“There was a revolution in the Dominican Republic that year. During that revolution the U.S. invaded the Dominican Republic ... One night there was a great bombing in the city and I was caught in the middle of everything with no possibility of getting home because there were riots all over. I had to call the police and they took me home that night,” he said.

A few weeks later, George’s mentor, Douglas was leaving to move back to Louisiana. Douglas stopped at the radio station and asked George what he wanted to study.

“I said OK, I would like to study medicine but that’s lengthy and I have no resources, no anything. And he said ‘OK, what is your second priority,’ I say, ‘well, I want to become a priest,’” George said.

With that Douglas gave George an envelope with a check inside for $8,000.
When choosing a college, George decided to go outside the Dominican Republic to avoid the rioting, which led to college campuses shutting down for days at a time.
“I had no time to waste,” he said.

He went to Inter-American University of Puerto Rico to study, and got a B.A. in sociology with a minor in education. Afterwards, he went to seminary school at Theological Episcopal Seminary of the Caribbean and got his Masters of Divinity degree. In 1972, George was ordained. Still interested in the medical field, George also became a paramedic.

“As a priest and paramedic, I was able to combine these two elements in my life to serve people,” he said.

No matter what their condition, George would go back to check on patients blending the line of service as priest and paramedic.

Moving to America
George went back to the Dominican Republic to serve. After five years he felt lacking in his opportunities to help people out of poverty.

“I experienced the same thing I experienced when I was growing up – lack of many things in my life,” he said. “I wasn’t able while I was earning to help out – reach out – to people in order to help them have a different life than the one I had.”

George felt he would be able to better serve and aid his countrymen from outside. As a paramedic, he went to Panama in 1988, volunteering for Project Hope, a U.S. foundation that goes to different countries to build health programs. He became a rector of a Panama church for 12 years before moving to two congregations in Chicago.

“Being here in America gives me the opportunity to reach out to some of my people, especially in these difficult moments of the economy, things are rough over there. I have the possibility of reaching out living and working. In the Dominican Republic I won’t have that possibility.”